party and among the public, but her hostility to Europe may have been a more significant factor in the coup that brought about her downfall in 1990. It was the irrational extremity of her European policy that led Geoffrey Howe to resign as deputy prime minister and triggered a leadership challenge from Michael Heseltine. It was hostility to Heseltine’s pro-European stance that led the Thatcherite wing of the party to mount the all-out effort to prevent him succeeding as leader, which resulted in the election of John Major. It was Major’s attempt to mend relations with Europe that led to his joining the European Exchange Rate Mechanism at the wrong rate –a decision that rebounded when sterling was ejected from the mechanism on ‘Black Wednesday’ in September 1992. Major’s government never recovered, civil war broke out among Conservatives on Europe, and the Conservative party became an ungovernable rabble.
Thatcher’s successors struggled for nearly a decade to understand what made their party unelectable. Clearly a number of decisions and events had contributed to this result, including the coup that toppled Thatcher in 1990. But Conservative unpopularity had deeper causes, and it was only when David Cameron became leader that the party was forced to accept that the obstacle to electoral success was conservatism itself. Post-Thatcher Britain is a less cohesive society than the one she inherited, but it is also more tolerant – unbothered about ‘family values’, no longer pervasively homophobic, less deeply racist and (though markedly more unequal) not so fixated on issues of class. While he relegated Thatcher to the history books Cameron accepted the society she had, contrary to her intentions, helped create. By burying Thatcher while embracing post-Thatcher Britain he made his party once again a contender for power.
Though it was an episode in the microcosm of British politics, the destruction of conservatism that resulted from Thatcherite policies was part of a larger trend. The application of neo-liberal ideas hasprovoked a backlash in many countries. In post-communist Poland and Hungary the triumph of the New Right has been followed by a resurgence of the Old Right, which while attacking the excesses of the free market has revived some of the worst features of the past. Integral cultural nationalism and the old poison of anti-Semitism have returned in much of post-communist Europe. In western Europe the far Right has undertaken a process of modernization as a result of which it has become a key player in democratic politics. Few European far-Right parties any longer hold to an interwar agenda of protectionism. In northern Italy and Switzerland they promote a high-tech economy linked with the rest of the world by global free trade but insulated from the world’s disorders by a ban on immigration. By fastening on immigration the far Right has been able to tap into the discontent of the casualties of globalization in rich countries –unskilled workers and middle managers whose work can be done more cheaply in emerging economies. By identifying itself with these groups the radical Right has been able to shape the political agenda in many countries, even where – as in France and Austria – it has declined in electoral terms. In countries with no tradition of far-Right politics new types of populism have developed. In Holland the ex-Marxist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated by a crazed animal rights activist, embodied a combination of libertarianism on issues of personal morality with xenophobic hostility to immigrants (particularly Muslims). In America the Right has splintered between neo-conservative ideologues and paleo-conservative nativists. The common factor in these disparate currents is that conservatism has ceased to be a coherent political project. The links it requires with the past have been severed. Any attempt to revive them can only be atavistic, and when conservative parties
Thatcher’s successors struggled for nearly a decade to understand what made their party unelectable. Clearly a number of decisions and events had contributed to this result, including the coup that toppled Thatcher in 1990. But Conservative unpopularity had deeper causes, and it was only when David Cameron became leader that the party was forced to accept that the obstacle to electoral success was conservatism itself. Post-Thatcher Britain is a less cohesive society than the one she inherited, but it is also more tolerant – unbothered about ‘family values’, no longer pervasively homophobic, less deeply racist and (though markedly more unequal) not so fixated on issues of class. While he relegated Thatcher to the history books Cameron accepted the society she had, contrary to her intentions, helped create. By burying Thatcher while embracing post-Thatcher Britain he made his party once again a contender for power.
Though it was an episode in the microcosm of British politics, the destruction of conservatism that resulted from Thatcherite policies was part of a larger trend. The application of neo-liberal ideas hasprovoked a backlash in many countries. In post-communist Poland and Hungary the triumph of the New Right has been followed by a resurgence of the Old Right, which while attacking the excesses of the free market has revived some of the worst features of the past. Integral cultural nationalism and the old poison of anti-Semitism have returned in much of post-communist Europe. In western Europe the far Right has undertaken a process of modernization as a result of which it has become a key player in democratic politics. Few European far-Right parties any longer hold to an interwar agenda of protectionism. In northern Italy and Switzerland they promote a high-tech economy linked with the rest of the world by global free trade but insulated from the world’s disorders by a ban on immigration. By fastening on immigration the far Right has been able to tap into the discontent of the casualties of globalization in rich countries –unskilled workers and middle managers whose work can be done more cheaply in emerging economies. By identifying itself with these groups the radical Right has been able to shape the political agenda in many countries, even where – as in France and Austria – it has declined in electoral terms. In countries with no tradition of far-Right politics new types of populism have developed. In Holland the ex-Marxist politician Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated by a crazed animal rights activist, embodied a combination of libertarianism on issues of personal morality with xenophobic hostility to immigrants (particularly Muslims). In America the Right has splintered between neo-conservative ideologues and paleo-conservative nativists. The common factor in these disparate currents is that conservatism has ceased to be a coherent political project. The links it requires with the past have been severed. Any attempt to revive them can only be atavistic, and when conservative parties
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